DANCING IN ASPEN – I DON’T REALLY HAVE TWO LEFT FEET!

Dancing the Lindy hop in Atascadero, California, USA (2005). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over the last year I have discovered something amazing about myself - I have a right foot!

 

I’ve always known I have two feet – it’s just that I thought they were both left feet. Thanks to my understanding, patient – very patient (persistent) girlfriend, Jo, and several good dance instructors, like Susan Kosch of Colorado Mountain College, I have now found that one of my left feet is actually a right foot and I can actually dance a little bit when I have to umm, get the opportunity.

 

I’m not talking about the funky, freewheeling, spastic kind of dancing I “learned” to do in high school and sometimes disturbingly displayed at nightclubs and parties in my younger years. I’m talking Dancing with the Stars-style smooth, precise, crisp, elegant, wow- the-audience kind of dancing.

 

Well, ok, I can’t actually dance like that – yet, but I am a considerably better dancer than I used to be; and last Saturday night, while much of the rest of the town of Aspen was most likely carousing the bars and nightclubs or awaiting the Lyrid meteor shower, I did have the opportunity to work out that right foot again.

 

Every third Saturday of the month, from 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM, a dedicated group of 20 - 30 people gather at the Rio Grande Commons in downtown Aspen to trip the light fantastic for a few hours at The Aspen Community Social Dance. These events, hosted by local volunteers such as Junee Kirk, usually consist of two, one-hour lessons in various styles such as Fox Trot, Waltz, Swing, Salsa, Rumba, Country Three-Step, Lindy Hop, and more. The evening is capped off by one and a half hours of open dancing.

 

The activities typically begin with an advanced/intermediate lesson for those dancers who discovered their right feet some time ago. This is followed by a beginning lesson for people like me who are just figuring this out, and if they’re a guy, have to be dragged in kicking and screaming. Actually, the screams are mostly silent, and the kicking part can be useful for practicing rhythm and for getting limbered up for the real action.

 

At the end of the evening, the instructors play a mix of music appropriate for many of the various styles, including the dances du jour, allowing you to practice all of slick moves you just learned while trying not to annoy and frustrate your partner at the same time.

 

Last Saturday’s lessons consisted of advanced Waltz and beginning Foxtrot. We decided to skip the beginning Foxtrot because we’re now experts as the result of taking ballroom dancing lessons from Susan at CMC (truthfully, we were just hungry and didn’t think we could hold up for three and a half straight hours of dancing without the sustenance – it’s a lot of exercise).

 

In the waltz lesson, we learned some new steps -- the slip step bridge, the twinkle, the promenade, the sachet, and the hook and spin. These are not necessarily exactly the correct names of the steps and, like my dancing itself, might be a little off, but that’s what I’ll call them for now.

 

We returned from dinner just in time to catch the last few minutes of the Foxtrot instruction. This was fortuitous because it was no longer completely beginner-oriented and we learned that we don’t have to just "slow, slow, quick-quick" – we can also "slow, quick-quick, slow, quick-quick." Wow!

 

During the open dancing, we waltzed, fox-trotted, tangoed, salsaed, and cha-cha-chaed, and we wore ourselves out (it’s a good thing we passed on the Foxtrot lesson). I also realized that I don’t have to be dragged to these dances any more. Now that I’ve learned how to move both of my feet, thanks to those classes at CMC and “practice, practice, practice”, I really enjoy these evenings. Thanks to Jo, I even have some special dancing shoes (one for the right and one for the left).

 

I am looking forward to the next Aspen Community Social Dance to prove, once again, that I don’t have two left feet or two right feet and that I have at least a modicum of rhythm. Watch out Dancing with the Stars!

Dippers in Aspen's Streams -- Just Looking for a Good Home

Riparian zone in Yosemite. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What do you know about Dippers? I, myself, have seen them a few times out on the local streams and all I knew about them is that they… well, they “dip”.

At the final Aspen Center for EnvironmentalStudies (ACES) Naturalist Nights presentation of the season, I found out also that, like us, they are always on the lookout for a good “neighborhood” in which to live. They are an indicator of river health because, in their quest to find the best places to nest and feed, they look for the same ecological characteristics that biologists/naturalists deem vital to healthy stream and riparian areas.

During the presentation, “The American Dipper as an Indicator of River Health”, Dee Malone with the Roaring Fork Conservancy, related that Dippers, which are Aspen’s only aquatic songbird, are habitat specialists – they occupy only healthy, fast-flowing mountain streams and their adjacent riparian areas. They seek out habitat close to the water in locations that are protected from floods, are in a natural flow regime, and are inaccessible to predators (often in areas covered by riparian foliage).

They eat mostly invertebrates such as the larvae or immature forms (nymphs) of certain species of mayflies and caddisflies found among the rocks and debris in and along rapidly-moving, cold streams. These invertebrates do not tolerate chemical, thermal, or sediment pollution and require healthy streams and vibrant riparian zone areas in order to survive.

According to Dee , a healthy stream has these attributes:

• they support, long-term, a full compliment of native wildlife species

• they contain clear, unpolluted water (not too hot, lots of oxygen -- which requires fast moving water – i.e. riffles, and not too much sediment)

• the adjacent riparian zone needs to have foliage that provides shade for the streams to keep the water cool, and which upon shedding leaves releases the nutrients on which the invertebrates feed.

• the root structures from the riparian zone must stabilize the banks, keeping sediment low and preventing “upland” pollutants from reaching the stream

Dee also revealed that climate change in the area, as evidenced by increasingly earlier occurrences of annual stream de-icing and spring runoff, is resulting in earlier spring floods and reduced mid and late-summer stream flow. This is believed to inhibit the stream's and adjacent riparian zone's ability to avoid unacceptable amounts of stream pollution, thus affecting the availability of the Dippers’ food supply.

Furthermore, the Dippers’ breeding cycle is synchronized with this stream de-icing and spring runoff, and although Dippers have evolved in such a way as to have their young developed enough to survive and feed in the high runoff water, the changing timing of this cycle in some areas may no longer allow their offspring to be sufficiently mature to survive this annual event.

In response to this, the Dippers will eventually move on.

It seems that, just like humans, Dippers are always on the lookout for a favorable neighborhood in which to live, and their disappearance from a given territory might be a strong indicator of overall poor stream and riparian zone health in that area.

To view recent Naturalist Nights presentations, visit The Wilderness Workshop’s website. - http://www.wildernessworkshop.org/news.html?page=287

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